16*9. 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 






Chap......_ Copyright No.. 

' Shel£„__._S4 

1^8 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



POEMS 



POEMS 



BY 



PHILIP HENRY SAVAGE 




BOSTON 

COPELAND AND DAY 

1898 



75*774 

.6* . 



34711 
COPIES REGE; 




COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY COPELAND AND DAY 



^r»« '99 



TO CITRIODORA 

I turn and see you passing in the street 
When you are not. I take another c way 9 
Lest missing you the fragrance of the day 
Exhale, and I know not that it is sweet. 
And marking you I follow, and when we meet 
Love laughs to see how) sudden I am gay ; 
Sweetens the air with fragrance like a spray 
Of sweet verbena, and bids my heart to beat. 

Love laughs ,• and girls that take you by the hand, 
Know that a sweet thing has befallen them ,• 
And women give their hearts into your heart. 
There is, I think, no man in all the land 
But would be glad to touch your garmenfs hem. 
And I, I love you with a love apart. 



CONTENTS 



Page 

Dedication v 

" Spinoza polished glasses clear "...,.. 3 

"If one should call my branching verse" . 3 

"Brother, Time is a thing how slight" . . 3 

" ' Believe in me!' Lord, who art thou " . 4 

March 20 . 4 

The Sparrow 6 

Presto 7 

In Dove Cottage Garden 8 

A Wreath of Buds and Lavender .... 10 

Sweet Thorn 10 

SlLKWEED II 

The Fire- Fly 12 

Clear and Far 12 

Architecture 14 

To a Pine-Tree 15 

Opal 15 

Morning 16 

" i know not what it is, but when i pass " . . 1 6 

Anadyomene 17 

Processional 22 

To a Bull-Frog 23 

vii 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Rose in Gray 24 

To Flowers 25 

On Coming of Age 26 

" It is long waiting for the dear companions " . 26 

"Mary, when the wild-rose' ' 27 

In a Garden 28 

Neptunian 30 

Shakespeare 31 

The Water-Clock 32 

"We welcome lightly and with ease" . . 32 

In August 32 

Dog-Days 33 

" Through rain the forest, roof and floor " 34 

Fagots 34 

October 10 . 35 

"God, thou art good, but not to me" . . 35 

The Pine-Tree 36 

" i dare not think that thou art by, to stand " 37 

The Anchor 38 

"The frost has walked across my world" . 38 

The Quick Harvest 39 

The Maple-Tree 39 

In Memoriam — Patsey 40 

"The ivy leaves (behind the shed)" . . . 41 

Greek and Christian . 41 

Dissolution 42 

November 42 

Against Forgiveness 43 

Confession 43 

November-Blind 45 

Winter a Cavern 46 

viii 



CONTENTS 

Page 

On a Weed, uncovered by the Rains in Decem- 
ber 46 

December .46 

Isaiah IV: 13 47 

New England 48 

Serene 49 

"From Billerica forth I send" 49 



IX 



POEMS 



I PINOZA polished glasses clear 
( To view the heavenly hemisphere ; 
I verses, that my friend therethrough 
My arc of earth may rightly view. 



I 



II 

F one should call my branching verse 
Bundles of fagot sticks, or worse, 

Each bush, I pray, let shed perfume, 
And burn with fire and not consume ; 

And may each branch, like Aaron's rod, 
Bud and betray the vital god. 



Ill 

BROTHER, Time is a thing how slight ! 
Day lifts and falls, and it is night. 
Rome stands an hour, and the green leaf 
Buds into being bright and brief. 
For us, God has at least in store 
One shining moment, less or more. 
Seize, then, what mellow sun we may, 
To light us in the darker day. 

3 



POEMS 



IV 



" Tl ELIEVE in me ! " Lord, who art thou 
JjThat bid'st me to believe in thee? 
I have my life to live, and now 

Thy yoke would but a burden be ; 
I would be free. 

" Come, follow me ! " Nay, Lord, my way 
Is wide of thine along the sea ; 
Among the hills I love to stray, 

Nor walks there anyone with me ; 
Why I with thee ? 



MARCH 20 

RETURN, return ! " the unheard cry 
Of robins in the upper sky, 
As by and long this barren coast, 
In March comes up the southern host. 

Low-anchored in the tangled swale 
I mark them slant along the gale, 
At speed, with every feather set 
For some more distant harbor yet. 



POEMS 

Around me is the mellow lisp 
Of bluebirds warbling, and the crisp 
Chick ! of the sparrow, and the cheer 
Of homing robins harbored here. 

No forward aspen-leaf or oak 
Has through his leathern jacket broke ; 
The grass puts up a doubtful wing ; 
The hazel censers coldly swing. 

But maple-buds, new fashioned 
On every stem, are tipped with red. 
Green, saffern-flushing osiers glow 
Above the wakened waters' flow. 

Year in, year out, the fire of spring 
Burns through its ashen covering, 
Bursts up in flower and scent and song, 
And drives the laggard March along. 

Year after year the birds will fly 
Along this same gray, mortal sky. 
Praise God I see them and can say, 
Another year, another day ! 



POEMS 

VI 
THE SPARROW 

THE morning lay divinely bright 
Across near field and distant height. 
From his high tower the influent sun 

Controlled the shifting tides of air, 
Which first in flow would lightly run, 
Then fall in ebb of radiance rare. 

One sparrow on an elm-tree high 
Conceived the day as fair as I. 
Midway the high bank of the tree 

He sat upon a beaked branch, 
And poured into the engulfing sea 

His music's slender avalanche. 

His pipe was sharp, his numbers few, 
And caught no ear but me and you. 
Yet forth upon his promontory 

He stood in the wide sea of air, 
And bore his witness to the glory 

With all the heart a thrush might dare. 



POEMS 

VII 
PRESTO 

QUICK-fingered Spring her wand choragic, 
A cherry branch, has waved in air ; 
And swift by arts of natural magic 

The clustered cherry-blooms are there. 

You Ve seen the children in their pastime 

Plunge rods into a syrop thick, 
Three times or four, and at the last time 

Hold up in joy a candy-stick. 

You 've seen a chemist, quick and curious, 

Observe a liquid saturate, 
And mark, when least the jar seemed furious, 

The crystal-flowers precipitate. 

And now, of cherry-blooms creator 

Ere yet the woods and walks are green, 

Rose-fingered prestidigitator, 

Young chemic Spring at work you 've seen 



o 



POEMS 

VIII 

IN DOVE COTTAGE GARDEN 

N the terrace lies the sunlight, fretted with 
the shade 
Of the wilding apple-orchard Wordsworth made. 



Sunlight falls upon the aspen, and the cedar glows 
Like the laurel or the climbing Christmas rose. 

Through green-golden vistas downward if your 
glances fall, 
Hardly would you guess the cottage there at all. 

Bines of bryony and bramble overhang the green 
Of the crowding scarlet-runner and the bean. 

But I mark one quiet casement, ivy-covered still. 
There he sat, I think, and loved this little hill ; 

Loved the rocky stair that led him upward to the 
seat 
Coleridge fashioned; loved the fragrant, high 
retreat 

In the wood above the garden. There he walked, 
and there 
In his heart the beauty gathered to a prayer. 
8 



POEMS 

In the sunshine by the cottage doorway I can see, 
In among her Christmas roses, Dorothy. 

Deeper joy and truer service, fuller draught of life, 
Came I doubt not to the sister, and the wife. 

Laurel, it may be, too early on his brow he set, 
And the thorn of life too lightly could forget. 

Dorothy, wild heart and woman, chose the better 
way, 
Met the world with love and service every day. 

Love for life and life for loving, and the poet's part 
Is to love his life and, living, love his art. 

But the shadow from the fellside falls, and all the 
scene 
Melts and runs, green-gold to slumbrous golden- 
green. 

Showers of golden light on Grasmere tremble into 
shade, 
While the garden grasses gather blade with blade ; 

And one patient robin-redbreast, waiting, waiting 
long, 
Seals the twilight in the garden with a song. 



POEMS 

IX 

A WREATH OF BUDS AND LAVENDER 



D 



EATH has a power to fright the soul, 
And unseat courage from control. 



But when, by love and sorrow led, 

I passed your door and looked, with dread 

To see the symbols of the dead j 

And found, in place of black despair, 
Which I all-looked for, hanging there 
A wreath of buds and lavender ; 

I blessed the heart that would out-brave, 
For love, the terror of the grave. 



X 

SWEET THORN 

WHAT is St. Francis' flower ? 'T is not 
The daisy nor the melilot, 
Nor that white little flower that springs 
In Grasmere's quiet garden-plot. 
10 



POEMS 

'T is not the lily-flower that blows 
In some high heaven of repose. 

'T is not the sorrow of the thorn, 
Nor utter passion of the rose. 

It is the wild-heart eglantine, 
(Sweet bush to a far sweeter wine), 

With joy for man, sweet-thorn for Christ, 
Not pagan all, not all divine. 



XI 

SILKWEED 

LIGHTER than dandelion down, 
Or feathers from the white moth's wing, 
Out of the gates of bramble-town 
The silkweed goes a-gypsying. 

Too fair to fly in autumn's rout, 

All winter in the sheath it lay ; 
But now, when spring is pushing out, 

The zephyr calls, "Away ! Away ! " 

Through mullein, bramble, brake, and fern, 
Up from their cradle-spring they fly, 

Beyond the boundary wall to turn 
And voyage through the friendly sky. 

ii 



POEMS 

Softly, as if instinct with thought, 

They float and drift, delay and turn 5 

And one avoids and one is caught 
Between an oak-leaf and a fern. 

And one holds by an airy line 

The spider drew from tree to tree ; 

And if the web is light and fine, 
'T is not so light and fine as he ! 

And one goes questing up the wall 
As if to find a door ; and then, 

As if he did not care at all, 

Goes over and adown the glen. 

And all in airiest fashion fare 

Adventuring, as if, indeed, 
'T were not so grave a thing to bear 

The burden of a seed ! 



12 



POEMS 

XII 
THE FIRE-FLY 

TO-DAY as writing in the park 
I sat, came twilight and the dark. 

There as I watched the color run 

In waves above the sunken sun, 

A lightning-bug, (for candle), took 

His post just here upon my book. 

His wing he raised, his golden urn 

Of fire he let a moment burn. 

Pray, for his sake, behold this line 
With a not common brightness shine. 

XIII 
CLEAR AND FAR 

HOW clear, when 't is most far from clear, 
Far sounds across the dark you hear : 
Approaching wheels, when in the lane 
The mist is turning into rain ; 
A baying hound below the hill ; 
A train, when all the night is still. 
The silent air, now dense and drowned, 
A carriage makes for every sound. 
How far, when 't is from clear most far, 
Most clear at night far noises are. 

13 



POEMS 

XIV 
ARCHITECTURE 

YOU 'VE seen a sky, besprent with mist 
Across the sleepy amethyst, 
Break when the western wind has sent 
His harriers to the orient. 

Then in the azure deeps - 
Gathers the mist and sleeps 
In snowy towering heaps. 

You 've seen the leafy storm of May 
Sweep the brown April earth like spray, 
And round some gray stem, bare of late, 
In full and body nucleate. 

Then all the earliest trees 

Hang out upon the breeze 

Their perfumed greeneries. 

In the vexed heaven of the mind 
You 've seen a fresh, irradiant wind 
Clear all and set in order fair 
The gray untextured vapors there. 

Then quick from every part 

The towering fancies start 

In frame and form of art. 



i4 



POEMS 

XV 
TO A PINE-TREE 

IF I could stand in such a plain, 
With such bright sap in every vein ; 
Could throw upon so blue an air, 
Branches so light and strong and fair ; 

If I could sink my roots so deep 
In darkness where the spirits creep, 
So broadly base, so firmly rear 
My stem in such an atmosphere 5 

If I could balance and reveal 
So utterly from head to heel 
The music I was born to be, 
In strophe and antistrophe; 

Thou 'dst not more nobly stand and shine 
Than I, proud Atlantean pine. 

XVI 
OPAL 

PALE as a pearl the morning lay 
In cloud diaphanous and gray ; 
While slow the smothered sun goes by 
A smouldering opal in the sky. 

*5 



POEMS 

Faint color in the wood he throws 
Like scattered petals of a rose ; 
And lays by every stem a hue 
Most sagely, delicately blue. 



XVII 
MORNING 

NOT least, 't is ever my delight 
To drink the early morning light ; 
To take the air upon my tongue 
And taste it while the day is young. 
So let my solace be the breath 
Of morning, when I move to death. 

XVIII 

I KNOW not what it is, but when I pass 
Some running bit of water by the way, 
A river brimming silver in the grass, 
And rippled by a trailing alder-spray, 

Hold in my heart I cannot from a cry, 
It is so joyful at the merry sight ; 

So gracious is the water running by, 
So full the simple grass is of delight. 
16 



POEMS 

And if by chance a redwing, passing near, 
Should light beside me in the alder-tree ; 

And if, above the ripple, I should hear 
The lusty conversation of the bee, 

I think that I should lift my voice and sing ; 

I know that I should laugh and look around, 
As if to catch the meadows answering, 

As if expecting whispers from the ground. 



XIX 
ANADYOMENE 

GIVE o'er the strife ! The poet cries 
The maiden mercy, in whose eyes 
He sees the light of paradise. 

Beyond the coppice, at the edge 
Where ends the poet's Privilege 
Along the lake, in June one day 
I sat to meditate this lay ; 
Wherein, forgetting Love, I planned 
To sing the sea and sky and land. 
And first, the picture — all the scene 
A dark uninterrupted green. 
No flower uplifted from the floor 
Breaks from the forest to the shore. 

2 17 



POEMS 

No daffodil that nods along 

The bloss'my banks of English song ; 

Myrtles nor roses, that entwine 

In many a fragrant Attic line, 

Here spring, to aid while I rehearse 

The homely numbers of my verse. 

Poppy nor violet is here, 

Where fern, with cornel and severe 

Bay, and the low-set laurel shine 

Beneath a sombre front of pine. 

Here as I lay among the brakes 

I watched the bright, green forest-snakes, 

The wasp go over, and the toad 

Sit undecided of his road ; 

And sudden, from a tufted top, 

The gray, silk-cinctured spider drop. 

Out of the high, benignant blue 

The earth a golden opiate drew. 

Low-lying, level waves of heat 

Along the glassed waters beat. 

Each ashen stem and each green leaf 

Lay sunned asleep ; and every sheaf 

Of needles, glittering on the pines, 

Inwove the light in glancing lines, 

Until I too had slept, ere this, 

But for the chimes I would not miss. 

What sound was there ? A chipping bird 
That idly in the bushes stirred ; 
18 



POEMS 

A locust droning in the brake ; 
The hum the darting midges make. 
What sound was there ? A sudden wind 
That caught the ripples from behind 
And kissed them as they ran ; that drave 
The whispering rout within the cave 
In rocks below me where I lay. 
You would have said 't was elves at play, 
With muffled hammers keeping time 
Beneath the wave in some cool chime 
On amber bells, — k-link, k-lunk, 
(With quiet joy the sound I drunk), 
K-link, k-lunk ! Now high, now low, 
The chimes came bubbling from below. 
If I could get into my rhymes 
The lapping music of the chimes, 
All men who read would run once more 
To hear the ripples on the shore. 
Then, as the last light wave of air 
Drew off in ebb and failure there, 
Fell back, and faintly, far away, 
Broke in the pines across the bay, 
Low on the fall and silence crept 
A sudden sound, then sank and slept. 
Again, in pulse and faint, awoke 
In matted leaves of pine and oak, 
Where through the jungle of the grass 
The armies of the emmets pass. 



x 9 



POEMS 

Then on that cess and failure came, 
As from a crypt and smothered flame, 
An incense, on the fall and swell 
Of every piny thurible. 
No scent of rose or spices rare 
Perfumed the quiet courses there ; 
No scattered homely mint and thyme 
Wove in the sun an odorous rhyme ; 
But June upon the air abroad 
Summoned the soul of leaf and sod, 
Shot with the glamour, and divine 
With the o'er-mastering scent of pine. 

Ah Summer, Summer ! Fragrant June, 
Sweet as a moth from the cocoon ! 
My thoughts in winter come and go 
As aimless as the errant snow ; 
Or lie, by wind and weather pressed, 
A dumb conservator at best. 
But April comes, and to the plain 
They fall and labor with the rain ; 
Sing as they fall and fallen, jet 
Their life into the violet ; 
And measure, in this homely rune, 
The drowsy summer-song of June. 

This was the picture ; this the green 
And golden magic of the scene ; 
The lapping music, and the boon 

20 



POEMS 

Delight of lotos-drowsy June, 

Ungraced and unadorned. Was heard 

No mellow-ringing song of bird ; 

No grace of woven grasses spread, 

With white and purple diapred 

Of blooms, to strike and snare the sense 

With jets of odorous frankincense. 

But peaceful as I lay and took 

These fancies down, (to make my book), 

Out of the lake, in spite of me, 

She rose, Anadyomene ! 



Give o'er the strife ! The poet cries 
The maiden mercy, in whose eyes 
He sees the light of paradise. 
She came, and shot through that dull clime 
Sharp scent of marjoram and thyme, 
Cool vervain, and the forest rang 
Quick with the song my own heart sang. 
She came, with love, and in one ray 
Redeemed the dulness of the day, 
Until the world, (sea, sky, and land), 
Lay in the hollow of her hand. 



21 



POEMS 

XX 

PROCESSIONAL 

BENEATH the rooftree of the dark, 
Like Noah shut within the ark, 
I welcome from the waste of night 
The earliest olive-branch of light. 

Like Jacob, I my load of sleep 
Cast off and see the angels creep, 
Processional in bright array 
Up the wide avenues of day ; 

See with Isaiah one who flies 
From that high orient sacrifice, 
Who, with a live coal in his hand, 
Touches to voice th' unpurged land. 

Then swift from hazel copse and brake 
The voices, voices, voices wake, 
In twilight woods, in choired bush, 
Antiphonal to the sweet thrush. 

Like rain across the eastern hill 
The dropping harmonies distil, 
Or run upon the roseate sky 
In silver bars of melody. 
22 



POEMS 

The notes upon the chorded air 
Vibrate in thrilling pulse of prayer, 
And on my heart responses win, 
The harp without, the harp within. 

Each morning on the walls of night 
Unfolds the oriflamme of light. 
Each murning westward with the sun, 
A tide of song, the voices run ; 

A hint of that clear day of gold 
The dewy morn has aye foretold, 
When these fresh voices shall prolong 
An everlasting morning-song. 



XXI 

TO A BULL-FROG 

THOU hoarse Aristophanic mime, 
Grotesque Silenus of the slime, 
That dar'st to lift a comic voice 
Where thrushes worship and rejoice, 

When I would build, apart from space, 
A simple shrine with simple grace, 

And lift the walls and arches there 
Of all that 's high-distilled and fair, 

23 



POEMS 

God knows, who is the architect 

Of all I summon and reject, 

Thy mask is there, and with the choir 
Thy hoary bass-note will aspire. 



XXII 
ROSE IN GRAY 

LIGHTLY moves the silver moon 
Through these glimmering nights of June, 
Lightly falls, and in the shine 
Of her moon-rays hyaline, 
Lifts the nightfall and the hush 
From the red rose on the bush, 
And the rose's heart discovers 
To her nightly wandering lovers 

I could tell you, Phyllis dear, 
How the rose looked faint and clear 
In the moonlight ; how she burned 
Like the sacred fire inurned ; 
Distant, with the far-withdrawn 
Sweet shamefacedness of dawn ; 
Quaintly cool, with yet the glow 
Of a lamp through falling snow. 



24 



POEMS 

So ; but when I whisper, " Sweet, 
Take my hand, come let us see 't," 
'T is the very smothered rose 
In your milk-white cheek that glows. 



XXIII 
TO FLOWERS 

VITAL breathings of delight 
Flush your cheeks with blue and gold, 
Painted bannerets of light, 
Picketed 'twixt cold and cold. 

Yet with purpose bear ye must 

Seasoned cannikins of fruit, 
Ere the red autumnal rust 

Crinkles downward to the root* 

This your little year, as ours, 
Blossoms cannot make sublime. 

Ye are rooted in the hours, 
Ye are passengers of time. 



25 



POEMS 

XXIV 
ON COMING OF AGE 

THROUGH days wherein I heard no purpose 
speak, 
Through years that passed me as a quiet stream, 
I dreamed and did not seek ; to-day I seek 
Who may no longer dream. 



I 



XXV 

T is long waiting for the dear companions, 
The friends that come not, though God knows I 
need them, 

I smile and wait; and yet 

The heart will fret. 



A white cloud in the east is shining ; sadly 
I see ; my heart is all too full of longing, 

With the old-time delight 

To view the sight. 

Wherefore I turn and in the eyes of women, 
In the strong hands of men, seek compensation. 

My prayer begins and ends, 

God give me friends. 
26 



POEMS 



XXVI 

MARY, when the wild-rose 
Blossomed on the vine, 
Hearts were light, eyes were bright, 
But none so bright as thine. 

Lightly the month of May, 

Sweet bud of June, 
Opened like a rose in gray, 

Under the moon. 

When the heart of summer 

Withered with rust, 
Bitter blows laid the rose 

Broken in the dust. 

Crystal wells, amber wells, 

On the hills of blue, 
Chiming like silver bells 

When the heart is true, 

Boom with the billows 

On the black shore ; 
Sweetness to bitterness 

Forevermore. 

27 



POEMS 

Sweetly the waters ran, 

(Wild rose for thee) ; 
The fountains of the heart of man 

Are bitter like the sea. 



XXVII 
IN A GARDEN 

SWEET, my Sweet, by the winding-water 
Sit and sing as the days go by. 
(What if the sounding sea had taught her 
Lust of life and the fear to die !) 

Here in the circuit thou hast drawn 
Consult the mayflower and the dew ; 

And peace attend thee on the lawn, 
Beneath a sky forever blue. 

The green be grateful to thine eyes, 

The blue a benediction be ; 
The waters bless thee where they rise ; 

But look not downward to the sea. 

A limpid source of water, silver 
Bubbling up through golden sand, 

Leads, ah ! down to the rolling river, 

Down, ah, down ! to the sounding strand. 

28 



POEMS 

There the waves on the shifting margent, 
Night and day with a rhythmic roar, 

Beat and batter the black and argent 
Reef and rock of the sullen shore. 

Spring will rise with a broken wing, 
Crippled in leaf and bud and stem ; 

The winding-water cease to sing, 
The dawn will drop her diadem, 

When thou but once beyond the pale 
Hast learned to look, or dared to see 

The sunrise shattered in the gale, 
The brazen terror of the sea. 

Rather, at rest in what is thine, 
Sip thou the honey as it flows, 

Nor lift thy wing above the line, 
A blind bee in a garden-close. 



29 



POEMS 

XXVIII 

NEPTUNIAN 

MIDWAY the height of one sheer granite 
rock 
I sat in face of the barbarian sea, 
And heard the god, out of the dreadful, deep, 
Midmost Atlantic summoning strength and here, 
In accents clear above the sullen roar 
Of all his waves, condemn the jutting world. 

" Populous Egypt was a realm and ruled 
By men that strove when Greece was yet unborn. 
I strive not, yet is Pharaoh deep in death, 
And still the seas sweep unappeased and new. 
Kings were ere Priam. Knew ye not ? I hold 
The substance, in my swift and solvent brine, 
Of all the race since Adam, and of strange, 
Unfeatured men ere Paradise. And I 
Sang to them all and cradled them and drank 
Their breath, their dust, their family and fame. 
Earth the grain-giver in my hands I hold, 
And if I will I love and if I will 
Hate, and I know no master but the sun, 
Who drinks the years up in a thin blue flame. 
From me the rivers and the rain from me 
Lead down their due-returning silver streams 
In circuit just \ and all the gulfs are mine 
3° 



POEMS 

Beneath the earth that echo of the deep. 

Laugh then, be glad ! E'en though I swallow down, 

To rock upon my oozy floor, the hulls 

Of odd ten thousand hurrying ships. They swell 

And mantle o'er with all the amorous life 

Ye reck not of, and in a year are gone. 

Laugh and be glad ! Tremble and fear ! I beat, 

Beneath the shining forward of the dawn, 

The dim high noon, and the red stars at night, 

Daylight and dark forever I beat, I beat 

The bulwarks of the shore, daylight and dark, 

With the blue night about me and the dawn." 

On billow billow rolling, in the press 
Confounded of the furious, following surge, 
Thunders the Deep, intolerant and sublime ; 
Gray-heart and grim to spurn of this black rock 
The temerarious front, and here to wrench 
The frame of earth aside before the sea. 



XXIX 

SHAKESPEARE 

THROUGH time untimed, if truly great, 
a Name 
Reverence compels and, that forgotten, shame. 
But in the stress of living you shall scan, 
Yea, touch and censure, great or small, the Man. 

3i 



E 



POEMS 

XXX 

THE WATER-CLOCK 

VER with fainter pulse and throw 
The heart's red clepsydra will flow. 
Then lest the drops run on to waste, 
Make haste, for love of life, make haste ! 

XXXI 

WE welcome lightly and with ease 
The gifts which providence foresees. 
But relish more the sudden grants 
Of unexpected circumstance. 

XXXII 
IN AUGUST 

WHEN the petal falls and lies 
Wrinkled like a leaf that dies, 
When the flower that once was merry 

Sobers to the russet berry, 
When the rose and hawthorn draws 
Slowly down to hips and haws, 
'T is the season birds are mute, 
'Twixt the flower and the fruit. 
32 



POEMS 

XXXIII 
DOG-DAYS 

EVERY morning dies the sun 
On the eastern horizon, 
And a blazing god is born 
From the white egg of the morn. 

Then the chorus that saluted 
Rosy-fingered dawn is muted, 
And the spirits of the earth 
Shrink beneath that fiery birth. 

Underneath the green they lie 
Where a water-brook goes by ; 
In a cowslip or, in turn, 
Couched below a fragrant fern. 

You shall find them in the shadow 
Where the woodside meets the meadow ; 
Lift the arum, they are there 
Breathing some cool well of air ; 

Waiting in the hopeful grass 
Till the fiery day shall pass, 
Till the flame is laid to rest 
On the red hearse of the west. 



33 



POEMS 



XXXIV 



THROUGH rain the forest, roof and floor, 
Is green as it was ne'er before. 
And, dense along the forest-track, 
The boles of trees were ne'er so black. 

Each driving cataract of rain 
The picture dyes a deeper stain. 
Yet, though the black be blacker seen, 
More vivid glows the vital green. 

XXXV 
FAGOTS 



i 



N Autumn, as the year comes round, 
(The seasons fall without a sound), 
By slow and stealth an ashen hue 
Comes on the green, comes on the blue. 

The sticks I burned beneath a larch 
The first bright day of tawny March, 

Gave out their heat and fell away 

Successive into rose and gray. 

Thus covertly, and term by term, 
Like as the year, I grow infirm ; 

Thus spend my substance like the fire, 
And like the last cold ash expire. 
34 



POEMS 

XXXVI 
OCTOBER 10 

THIS cool white morning by the wall 
How welcome does the sunlight fall 
To the curled aster, with its blue 
Close-folded petals, out of view. 
They open shining to the sun, 
As if their year had just begun ; 
Nor guess, (prophetic in the blast), 
That this warm day may be the last. 

XXXVII 

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are 
your ways my ways, saith the Lord. 

GOD thou art good, but not to me. 
Some dark, some high and holier plan 
Is hid beyond the world with thee. 
To the immortals, not to man, 
God thou art good. 

I do conceive thee wholly wise, 

And good beyond the power of touch. 
Eternal lovingkindness lies 
In all thy purposes ; so much 
I do conceive. 

35 



POEMS 

I do confess in thee above, 

All that thy lovers have to thee 

Ascribed, of fellowship and love. 
The words of Jesus on the tree 
I do confess. 



Into thy hands I do commend 

My spirit. All thy ways I trust ; 

In fear acknowledge to the end 
Thy will, and perish with the dust 
Into thy hands. 

God thou art good, but not to man. 

Thy purposes do not contain 
The mighty things I hope. Thy plan 

Looks past humanity and pain. 
God thou art good. 



XXXVIII 
THE PINE-TREE 

WHEN blood was in my heart like wine 
I crept beneath a branching pine ; 
With passion drank the piny breath 

And no thought further then than death. 

36 



POEMS 

Now blood is colder and instead 
I mind the liquor of the head, 
Wherein I see, as in a glass, 

The pine decay, the season pass. 

And I have known, with sudden sight, 
A shadow from the pine like night, 
And sorrowing breezes, verse by verse, 
Lament above the spirit's hearse ; 

And found some comfort, but not all, 
Where the red needles wove a pall, 
To mark through that dead carpet shine 
The promise of a seedling pine. 



XXXIX 

I DARE not think that thou art by, to stand 
And face omnipotence so near at hand ! 
When I consider thee how must I shrink, 
How must I say, I do not understand, 
I dare not think ! 

I cannot stand before the thought of thee, 
Infinite Fulness of Eternity ! 

So close that all the outlines of the land 
Are lost, — in the inflowing of thy sea 
I cannot stand. 

37 



POEMS 

I think of thee, and as the crystal bowl 
Is broken and the waters of the soul 

Go down to death within the crystal sea, 
I faint and fail when, (thou, the perfect whole), 
I think of thee. 

XL 
THE ANCHOR 

AS when, these autumn days, I ride 
Along the painted country-side, 
Meadow and way and wood go by, 

A never-ending race, 
But yet, beyond their passing, my 
Wachusett holds his place ; 

So let each winged month and year 
Sweep into place and disappear ; 
In order seen and loved, be sure ! 

Ere ends its period ; 
But let, beyond them all, endure 
One year, and that be God. 

XLI 

THE frost has walked across my world, 
Has killed the sallows and has curled 
The ferns. Ah, Summer, at what cost, 
For harvest, you invite the frost ! 

38 



POEMS 

XLII 
THE QUIET HARVEST 

WITHIN a thicket ere the sun 
Was up, I heard a whisper run. 
Each bush and tree was bidding, now, 
Its yellow leaves forsake the bough. 
And each leaf, having had its day, 

Stepped down to earth the shortest way. 

In April budding on the tree ; 
In hot July full-blown and free; 
October bids them no more be c 
I had, I think, as fair a spring ; 
July let equal fortune bring ; 
God give as quiet harvesting. 

XLIII 
THE MAPLE-TREE 

DAY after day I travel down 
From Billerica to the town ; 
Day after day, in passing by 
A cedar-pasture, gray and high, 
See, shining clear and far, (a mile), 
The white church-steeple of Carlisle ; 
And bright between Carlisle and me, 
Daily a glowing maple-tree. 

39 



POEMS 

Suffused with yellow, every part 
Is burning saffron at the heart. 
Upwards and warm the colors gain 
From ruddy gold to claret-stain; 
And downward tending, lightly lean 
To citron yellow and cold green. 
Day after autumn day it still 
More deeply burns against the hill. 
And now I 've made of it a type 
Of hopes, like mine, near autumn-ripe, 
And watch, intent, which first shall be, 
The consummation of the tree, 
Or that gold harvest-hope prepared for me. 



XLIV 
IN MEMORIAM.— PATSEY 

MAXWELL, the master, built above 
His dog this testament of love, 
Where, on a granite block incised, 
These words told how the dog was prized : 

" Here Patsey lies, by bitter chance 
Dead ere his time, by fates unruly ; 

Stranger, regard this circumstance 

And solemn rite ; we loved him truly." 

40 



POEMS 

And quite as if 't had been a man, 
The slow foot of the moss began, 
Envious, to mar this simple state, 
And the poor name t' obliterate. 



XLV 

THE ivy leaves, (behind the shed), 
Turned bright and blushed a rosy red. 
Bit by the frost they sobered down, 
And now can show but russet-brown. 
Another frost and they will fall, 
And there will be no leaves at all. 

Thus down, through scarlet, gray, and dun, 
The earth will fall into the sun. 



XLVI 
GREEK AND CHRISTIAN 

MAKE haste, my soul, the Wise Man whis- 
pered, go ! 
Gather the golden ears before the snow ; 

There is no harvest after death. But low, 
The Shining One replied, It is not so. 

4i 



T 



POEMS 

XLVII 

DISSOLUTION 

HE leaf will fall, through green and gold, 
To dissolution in the mould. 



The tree will fall, and in the sod 
Complete its final period. 

The night will die when one bright ray 
Shoots up and beckons in the day. 

And that bright ray in turn will lie 

Coffined with all bright things that die ; 

Swept out to space, when on this shore 
Leaf, tree, the earth, (which all upbore), 
And day and night shall be no more. 

XLVIII 
NOVEMBER 

THE sun, this old November, 
Across the sodden slope, 
May bid the heart remember, 
But cannot bid it hope. 

42 



POEMS 

XLIX 
AGAINST FORGIVENESS 

WE do not ask to be forgiven, 
Nor out of earth to win 
An unpremeditated heaven, 
Nor quit the claim of sin. 

Our acts be on our head. As yet 
While masterful we live, 

The world we ask not to forget, 
Nor ask God to forgive. 



CONFESSION 

IN Adam's sin 
Did I begin. 

With toil and sweat 
My bread I get ; 

At once, with Abel 
Spread my table, 

Rebel with Cain 
And sin again. 



43 



POEMS 

O'er all the earth, 
(Which is my birth), 

I joy to find 
My human kind ; 

Read in the sky 
That I must die, 

Yet needs must sing 
When it is spring. 

And though I run 
Before the sun, 

By autumn brought 
To steady thought, 

I still rehearse 
The primal curse, 

And in the snow 
Confess my woe. 

Yet here apart, 
Deep in my heart, 

Kin to the sod 
I wait for God. 



44 



POEMS 

LI 
NOVEMBER-BLIND 

IN this November though I bend 
My heart I cannot find a friend 
About the wood. The green is down 
From water-mead to forest crown ; 
(Save where the myrtle in the lane 
Paints the gray sod an emerald stain ; 
Save where the pines below the hill 
Glow with the suns of summer still). 
The hardy juniper to dust 
Corrodes in this autumnal rust. 
The goldenrod and aster-head 
Are black and broke and more than dead. 
This morning, fog about the height 
Creeps up and chokes the growing light ; 
Lies like a blanket through the wood, 
And doubly trebles solitude. 
And when the sun above the mist 
Shall clear a space of amethyst, 
He too shall hunt, November-blind, 
A friend about the wood to find. 



45 



POEMS 

LII 
WINTER A CAVERN 

THROUGH dim November down as through 
an arch, 
I move in cavern darkness until March ; 
Whence looking back, I can no more remember, 
For joy, the days sinister since November. 

LIII 

ON A WEED UNCOVERED BY~THE 
RAINS IN DECEMBER 

IN all its grace This was the Solomon's Seal, 
When summer shone. Now winter glooms, 
and here 
On flower and stalk has set his iron heel. 
Another year, my life, another year ! 

LIV 
DECEMBER 

NEW friends forbear, and let old friends 
remember 
With pity him who ends his course to-day ; 
Nor heap with scorn his grave in dead December 
Whose life bore golden promises in May. 
46 



POEMS 

LV 

ISAIAH VI : 13 

c \ S a teil-tree or an oak," 
ilSo the ancient prophet spoke, 
" Whose heart remaineth when they shed 
Their leaves ! " The prophet now is dead, 
But on a girl his mantle falls 
And heartens other funerals. 

December stood in confidence, 
Winter long had pitched his tents, 
When she and I together came 
Along a way without a name; 
And there she bade me lift my head 
The while those verses old she said. 

A knotted oak above the snow 
I saw within a pasture grow ; 
A sturdy tree, not over high, — 
Some several inches more than I. 
His leaves were gone, but in the air 
His branches other beauty wear. 

About him little whips of wind 
A wreath of winter sunlight bind. 

47 



POEMS 

The snow upon his feet is cold, 
But in his heart is more than gold. 
And light that only winter knows 
Springs up to blossom on the snows. 



LVI 
NEW ENGLAND 

WHOE'ER thou art, who walkest there 
Where God first taught my feet to roam, 
Breathe but my name into the air, 

I am content, for that is home. 

A sense, a color comes to me, 

Of baybushes that heavy lie 
With juniper along the sea, 

And the blue sea along the sky. 

New England is my home ; 't is there 
I love the pagan sun and moon. 

'T is there I love the growing year, 

December and young-summer June. 

I 'd rather love one blade of grass 

That grows on one New England hill, 
Than drain the whole world in the glass 

Of fortune, when the heart is still. 

4 8 



POEMS 

LVII 
SERENE 

THIS crystal sapphire of the sky 
Is saner far than you and I, 
Who in our passions and our dreams 
Run evermore to wild extremes. 

The pure perfection of the sea 
Lies not in mirth and tragedy ; 
But like the silence of the snows 
In breadth of beauty and repose. 

God give one moment, ere we die, 
As crystal clear as the blue sky, 
Serene as ocean, white as snow, 
And glowing as the heavens glow. 

LVIII 

FROM Billerica forth I send 
My book. Pray take it for a friend. 
Or should it chance offend you, know 
It is not willingly your foe. 



49 



THIS BOOK IS PRINTED BY THE UNIVER- 
SITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS 
DURING OCTOBER 1 898 



IVJ98 



